In Memory Yet Green
by Tammany Tiger
Summary: This is a response story to "The Sign of Three." If you've not yet seen it you may want to skip, as it's mildly spoilery. Mycroft and Sherlock, upon an event foretold in the episode that may or may not come to pass. Just for the sake of this one little possible echange, I can't help but hope it does.


**In memory yet green, in joy still felt,**

**The scenes of life rise sharply into view.**

**We triumph; Life's disasters are undealt,**

**And while all else is old, the world is new.**

**Isaac Asimov**

_Sherlock?_

Mycroft looked across the main room of the Diogenes Club to where his brother sat amidst the duffers and the diplomats, looking like a wild aborigine cast up by some alien tide in his slim informal suit with his mad mop of hair. Mycroft had put his brother up for membership years ago, and covered his fees, wanting his brother to always know there was at least one place he could go to retreat from the noise and push and people, but he was never surprised the membership was seldom used. To find Sherlock here in the middle of the day was beyond peculiar. To find him here with the expression he currently wore, of a rugby ball carrier after a particularly brutal tackle?

Mycroft crossed the floor with practiced silence, dodging easily among the chairs, occasional tables, and lamps, feet padding softly on the dense carpet. He came to stand by Sherlock's chair. When his brother didn't notice him, he frowned.

Sherlock sat staring forward, a faint frown settled between his brows, holding a manila office folder on his lap.

Mycroft's jaw tightened. He risked running a finger over his brother's shoulder—far more acceptable at the Diogenes than outside the club, for all it was a form of disturbing intimacy. At least it was silent.

Sherlock twitched, drew a sudden breath, then looked up. Mycroft was amazed to see something that almost resembled relief on his brother's face, as Sherlock recognized him.

He raised one eyebrow, and cocked his head, knowing Sherlock would understand the implied question.

_Good heavens, Sherlock, what are you doing here?_

_This._

Sherlock fished in his pocket, and pulled free his mobile phone. He flicked and sorted, and handed it up to his older brother, who took it without even mute comment.

On the screen was a photo of Sherlock, looking, if possible, still more stunned, with a small, fair, blond infant in his arms. Mycroft grimaced. At least the baby had a blanket, he thought. Sherlock looked like he needed one, too—one of those orange shock blankets the paramedics carried with them. He nodded, and handed the phone back, eyes conveying understanding._ Ah. John and Mary's baby was born today, then. I see. Maybe. Or not?_ He risked another arched brow. _And you're here, with me, not them?_

Sherlock set the phone on the arm of the club chair, then slipped long fingers into the manila envelope, pulling out a small sheaf of aging photos. Mycroft twitched, recognizing fragments of familiar places and scenes even before Sherlock sorted through them and started handing them up. When Mycroft took the first, he gave a bent, sad smile.

A seven-year-old boy in short trousers sat smack in the center of a large sofa, a pillow on his lap—a baby on the pillow. His eyes were large, and he was stiff with his effort at being careful of his burden. He looked owlishly out at the camera, a portrait of both tenderness and uncertainty, with one arm supporting both pillow and infant, and the opposite hand held slightly up, index finger extended and gripped tightly by the baby in a round little fist.

Sherlock handed up another photo.

The same boy, only slightly older, moved cautiously beside the younger child, who was just now learning to walk. He held his brother's hand. He hovered, still too careful, glancing back a bit reproachfully at the photographer, as though unsure he liked the encroachment—or the threat of having his efforts archived for eternity.

Sherlock handed up another.

The baby was a full-fledged toddler, now, perhaps three…running at warp speed across the room. The older boy frowned, unhappily, trying to watch the telly past the yodeling terror charging through. Mycroft, knowing full well what he was observing, recognized the faint images of an old American science fiction show running in the background. Ah, yes. That would be at the beginning of his Spock years, when he'd yearned to be beamed up to the Enterprise, and from there transported to Vulcan, where he'd no doubt find a true home and a people who understood him. And maybe, if he was lucky, he'd get a le matya. It would be an improvement on Sherlock's eternal limp blue bunny, Bluebell.

Another picture, this one taken mere moments later.

Sherlock, little devil, on the sofa, straddling Mycroft, tugging his hair—and Mycroft could see what he'd never wanted to admit at the time—his own patience with the holy terror filling his life with frustrations. He looked at his own child-hand carefully unknitting Sherlock's fists from his hair, and his arm around the younger boy's waist for fear he fall off the sofa in his wildness.

Sherlock, then, gathered the larger heap of pictures and held them up. Mycroft knew there had to be thirty-some years of photos in the pile—maybe more, if Sherlock had raided pre-Sherlock pictures as well, to find young Mycroft before he'd ever had a baby brother. Sherlock's eyes asked a question—a question Mycroft couldn't interpret. He shrugged, and let his face express his confusion. _I have no idea what you're asking, brother-mine._

Sherlock frowned, and reached for the phone, typing quickly. A second later Mycroft's phone quivered in his pocket, and he drew it out, reading the text.

_How did you do it?_

Mycroft's mouth quirked, and he typed back a longer message even more quickly, hitting send.

_Willingly, brother-mine. Never doubt it. Willingly. Now, send me a copy of that photo of you and John's spawn. I believe I want a copy to frame._


End file.
